Close
by ibuzoo
Summary: Death is not a sudden state of mind, a brusque darkness or void that swallows you whole. Death is not a flash of green and screams and despair and a veil. Death is a girl, with the most beautiful laugh you ever heard, with skin as smooth as marble, with hair so full and brown that you want to bury your fingers in and ravish her full lips.


**o.**

Here is what they do not tell you about Death: when Death says "You are born for this" , she clearly means "You will die for this".

* * *

**i.**

She has slender hips and the right curves in the right places, a sixteen-year-old girl with big brown eyes and wild hair that falls over her shoulders in thick curls. Her delicate skin that peeks out underneath the long black coat shines as pale as the moonlight, looks like the colour of the bark on trees that Tom climbed at the orphan house, back when he tried to hide himself so the older boys wouldn't cane him again, back when the sound of his name didn't seem so much like a failure.

She stares him down in the orphan house he despises so much, sees the cruelty behind his eyes, sees the dirt covering his face and staining his hair, and she says in a voice too big for her body, "Tom".

It sounds nothing like absolution.

* * *

**ii.**

She doesn't have a name and when he asks, she laughs and laughs, throwing her head back, brown curls glistening in the sun, biting contrast to the dark swirling around her lean frame.

"You can call me Hermione."

* * *

**iii.**

It is the most beautiful sound he ever heard.

* * *

**iv.**

This is Hogwarts: dry grassland, a dark sea and the woods, trees scattering by unceasing wind. The sun is high and hot and unrelenting, burns into his back, thick air in his lungs.

This is home.

_(there's a network of caves and secret passageways close to the border, close to Hogsmeade and Tom is keen to find them all; he sleeps in each of them, careful to switch every night so he never starts calling one home and sometimes he hears water dripping, wind whistling on through, the earth stretching and moving and shifting while he's stuck in limbo, unknowing and unknown - he always finds his way before morning dawns though)_

* * *

**v.**

"I see you,Tom," Hermione says, voice melodic and syllables booming around him, "I see you, and I know you. I will make you a leader of men. You were born for this, Tom."

Tom stares at her, sees her wild hair as radiant beauty around her face, lips pinkish red and the youth glistening behind her eyes, sees the bones in her wrists and her knuckles white. She looks alive and every breath she takes fills his lungs the same. He wonders why she calls him a prophet and lets him live in a place that's starving itself to death.

"Will I be immortal?", he mutters, half in awe while his hands burn to touch her delicate skin, craves to kiss the taste of her flesh.

She doesn't answer.

He pretends he doesn't see her shoulders tense.

* * *

**vi.**

He wanders years without a goal, the hunger for more lingering just under his surface and Tom knows he can't turn back now, this is the way, this is what he signed up for.

In the woods, in the maze of dark barks and leaves that sing long forgotten songs, where the soil gets under his skin and strips him raw, he can see a bird circling the moon, black and shining, pitch dark against the white of the night sky. It flies above his head for some minutes, unrelenting in its flight, and eventually he gives in, watches it make a path through clouds as he plods along behind it.

When he sees his father's manor shimmering far ahead on a hill, he feels an awful rage inside, a power he can't grasp, much less control and the grip around his wand goes painfully hard, nails digging in his palms.

He glances up, but by now the bird has flown away.

* * *

**vii.**

He was born for this.

* * *

**viii.**

Killing them was awfully easy.

It felt right, her hand in his, guiding the wand, the words slipping from his lips like liquid honey.

_(avada kedavra, avada kedavra)_

He didn't feel his soul splitting, just the warmth of an embrace around his body, her breath and her scent swirling around him. There was a kiss on his lips and Tom felt free.

* * *

**ix.**

Death is not a sudden state of mind, a brusque darkness or void that swallows you whole.

Death is not a flash of green and screams and despair and a veil.

Death is a girl, with the most beautiful laugh you ever heard, with skin as smooth as marble, with hair so full and brown that you want to bury your fingers in and ravish her full lips.

* * *

**x.**

His charm and looks are his free tickets out of every accusation and Tom learns to take good care of his weapons, oils them, sharpens them from time to time. Occasionally someone will have doubts _(Dumbledore, always Dumbledore) _and he rages in utter solitary, behind closed doors and meetings with his knights, thinks about Death and how she'd guide his wand.

Fortunately the words stay silent against his lips.

_(he supposes his prayers are answered each time he finds the right answer, but whatever thanks he gives afterwards always sounds belligerent in his head)_

* * *

**xi.**

It's like playing hide and seek back on the cave with the other orphans, except they have wands, and there are no muggles around.

* * *

**xii.**

She sends him on a mission, thirsting for knowledge and that's the last time she sees her for a long time, no need for her hand guiding him anymore but it makes him furious, his blood boiling.

_(why doesn't she visit him anymore? where did she go?)_

He misses things, out here in the world of the living, misses her hair and her voice like the sound of church bells. He even misses Hogwarts a little, just for being a familiar kind of adversity if nothing else.

Every step on his path, he misses something else. Every drop of sweat, the questions and the fury catch and scrape under his skin.

This can't be everything.

This can't be all.

* * *

**xiii.**

He was born for this.

* * *

**xiv.**

There are green eyes in the face of a young boy, the same green that flashes out of his wand and Tom just stops, closes his eyes.

_(is this the end?)_

Darkness is around him but light radiates from her frame and Tom blinks once, twice to make sure he isn't dreaming, knows that you can't dream when you die.

She laughs and dances on bare feet, an endless void behind her back and her smile is open, warm, friendly, almost cruel from Tom's point of view. She doesn't say a word and Tom wants to say her name but no words are allowed in this, no sound is heard.

Her fingers trace an imaginary map in the air, words and spells flowing out of her mind and it feels like a purpose, a guide for the future while he watches her hands sketch in the darkness, wind-chapped and small and infinitely cleaner than his will ever be.

_(is there a future in death?)_

"You will return, to a crown of bones, to a world that'll fear your name. You will return, Tom", the words a heavy taste on his throat and even if she didn't use her voice once, he could still hear it clear and loud, drumming, vivid.

There's a kiss on his lips and she turns around to leave, so he rises, the words on his lips bursting out, bubbling in his mind without thinking twice about it, "Will I see you again?"

_(will I die again?)_

The question scrapes in his throat as he feels the loss of something he wasn't sure he could miss anymore, feels something throbbing against his ribcages, fears.

She startles, stops, closes her eyes and vanishes in thin air, her voice unearthly loud, "We will see."

_"Of course",_ he doesn't say, "o_f course."_

* * *

**xv.**

It doesn't end here.

He opens his eyes in light, again.

* * *

**xvi.**

He was born for this.


End file.
